OIL WELLS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 129, 4 June 1927, Page 20

OIL WELLS

DEEPEST IN SOTJTHEEN

CALIFOENIA.

;;; Oil well figures for 1926 show a y\ hew world depth record. According - : ;to the "Standard Oil Bulletin," the •-deepest hole ever drilled is the 8046----q foot well sunk last year in the Olinda ;;• field in Southern California, and sunk ■in vain, since no oil was struck. The . j feat of reaching that far into the earth, .'however, has given rise to predictions ::.. of successful drilling before many years :ifo depths of 10,000 to 12,000 feet. :•' Ten years ago, a holo successfully ;'dripped to 3000 feet was considered an achievement; to-day it is looked on only as a good start, states the "New York •'Times.". California has the majority ,-of the world's deepest oil wells. In ■'.' the Los Angeles basin there is ono 7591 ,;'feet deep, drilled at a total cost of :|:;inore than 170,000 dollars. There are ;■;. two wells in West Virginia of 7579 7386 feet depth, respectively, and ; one near Berlin, Germany, of 7348 feot ■'. depth. The deepest gas well, 7756 feet, lls iit Pennsylvania. ' . ' . ■

•■• The twentieth century brought in a ■viiew. method of -drilling for oil, de!j scribed in the slang of oil field mech- " anics as the "round-and-around." It \"is based on a modification of an inven|j tion of 1845 for drilling water wells ;;; and calls for the continuous rotation of

instead of water, since it has been found a column of pipe with a cutting-bit on the end. Originally, water was forced down through the pipe and by pressure returned upward between the outer surface of the pipe and the walls of the hole. To-day, mud is pumped in instad of water, since it has been found to plaster the walls of the hole and hold

them in place. Tho rotary method was first applied to oil drilling in tho Gulf Coast fields of Texas in 1901, and is held accountable for the depths that have been reached. This method has' not- replaced but lias supplemented the older method, known as tho cable-tool or tho "up-and-down, I which is based on a principle used by the Chinese in search '..of salt thousands of years ago. The 'digging principle they used was percussion, created by a string of sharp and heavy tools alternately lifted and dropped. This, action was "set up by coolies jumping from a platform on a springpole, from which the string of tools was suspended. Similar spring-hole ' and "kiekingflown" methods were used, until *"the

middle of the nineteenth century" to dig brine wells in the United State's. For oilmen in Burma, Palestine, Ecuador, and Cuba had long dug pits by hand, but the idea of drilling was first introduced by Colonel E. L. Drake, in ::1559. He used tho Chinese xjcrc.us.sion method with modifications, depending less on manpower, and struck oil at lejieitt f cci,